FIXXX
I thought that the Back Plate was part of the Cooling System?
As far as i know the plate has 2 functions: stability for heavy cards and a heatsink, provided you have proper surface connection. Which is why evga offers the pads to cards with a backplate.
Quickly looking at my dismantled 1070, i can verify there are 4 small rectangular thermal pads on the back-plate
that make contact right at the back of the GPU in a square pattern. That is the only point at which the back-plate
makes contact with the PCB. Like mentioned earlier, i'd feel better if those tests where taken with the back-plate
off, as theres no direct contact there. I would hazard to guess the temps will be higher once it was removed ?
Theres like 3mm of air between the back-plate and the back of the PCB where the VRMs live.